The Tumblr platform enables businesses to create stylish, modern-looking blogs for free with no coding experience. One of the advantages of Tumblr is the ease with which content can be shared and reblogged, so it's important that the original authorship of images and text on the site is always credited. To emphasis your company's copyright over the posts published to your blog, it's possible to add a copyright notice to the main front page as well as individual posts.

Step 1

Log in to your Tumblr account and click the small gray gear icon to view the Preferences page. Click the title of the blog with which you wish to work.

Step 2

Click "Customize" under the current theme thumbnail.

Step 3

Check for a copyright message box in the list of customizations in the pane on the left. Some themes, including Strands and Amplify, include a copyright message as a built-in modification you can tweak. If it is available, enter your copyright message into the field provided.

Click "Save" and then "Close" to confirm your changes and upload the copyright notice. On most themes, the description is displayed on the blog front page and individual post pages.

Tip

Tumblr post creation pages include a "content source" field where you can enter a link back to your blog if required. This ensures the origin of the post is retained, and a link back to your blog is always shown, even when the post is reblogged elsewhere.

For images uploaded to Tumblr, you might also want to consider adding a small copyright watermark somewhere on the picture. This can be done in many popular image editing tools, including GIMP and Photoshop.

If you wish to add the copyright message somewhere other than the description (in the footer, for example), click "Edit HTML" on the customization page and insert your copyright message in the location of your choice. Some coding knowledge will be required to tag and position the message correctly. Note that editing the theme HTML in this way disables Tumblr's built-in theme update feature, so future theme updates must be added manually.

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About the Author

An information technology journalist since 2002, David Nield writes about the Web, technology, hardware and software. He is an experienced editor, proofreader and copywriter for online publications such as CNET, TechRadar and Gizmodo. Nield holds a Bachelor of Arts in English literature and lives in Manchester, England.